She Has Your Eyes (5 page)

chapter six

David buried his face in the pillow and let out a dreadful groan, not unlike the sound one makes when faced with getting out of bed at the crack of dawn.

“Come on, you promised,” I said.

He propped up two pillows behind him and hoisted himself up against them, the back of his head touching the padded headboard. He then put his arm around me and pulled me to him so that my head rested on his chest. It was a feeling I loved—his torso muscular and rigid, protecting what seemed some days to be a very fragile heart.

David paused, no doubt trying to figure out where or how to begin.

“Janine was one of my first clients—well, sort of. She was a bartender at an upscale hotel lounge in Manhattan, and I was trying to drum up business via word of mouth.”

“So instead of passing your card on to others, she used it herself?”

“Pretty much. Said the firsthand knowledge would make her a good spokesperson.” He guffawed at the memory, and I could tell he was actually reliving the moment in his mind. “And I didn’t charge her, told her that the first date was
on the house. I don’t know, maybe she misinterpreted that as a real date.”

“It
was
a real date,” I said, unexpectedly defensive on Janine’s behalf. “The fact that you called it a date would imply that it was an actual date.”

“I also said it was on the house. Wouldn’t that imply something as well?”

“I would’ve thought you were asking me out as you and not as an escort.”

“Um, aren’t we getting a little off track here?” he said, impatient. “I honestly didn’t think about it at the time, OK? Anyway, she went by Jane back then. And as you know, I never used my real name, not even in the early days.”

“Did you find her attractive?” I asked. His expression read,
Don’t even try to get me there
, and I knew he was right. And yet, like an idiot, I persisted. “I’m not asking in a jealous girlfriend sort of way”—or maybe I was—“I just want to know. She’s not a bad-looking woman if you take away all that eyeliner and tone down the highlights. Besides, you must have liked her enough to give her a free date.”

He thought carefully about his answer, weighing his options, I could tell.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said before he had a chance to speak.

“Does it matter? The more important detail is that back in those days as an escort I actually… I was offering more than just a date to the party, know what I’m sayin’?”

I knew.

“So you and Janine—Jane—had sex.”

“
Protected
sex,” he added. “Or so I thought. The condom must’ve been defective.”

“So what happened?”

“A few days later I went back to the hotel to meet a potential client for drinks, and Jane was tending bar.”

“Did she say anything to you?”

He hesitated.

“It wasn’t a pleasant exchange,” he said.

“How so?”

“Keep in mind that I was new at this. I had no idea what the proper escort etiquette was, if there even was such a thing. It’s not like Christian or I studied under anyone’s tutelage—we made things up as we went along.”

This couldn’t be good if he was laying out a defense for himself. He seemed to need my prodding. “Continue,” I said.

“I acknowledged her at the bar. We flirted a bit and she hinted that she wanted to ‘see’ me again.” He gestured quote marks with his free hand.

“And?”

“And I pretty much told her that she was more than welcome to if she ponied up the money.”

I cringed and pulled away for a moment to look at him. “You didn’t.”

He grimaced. “Yeah, I did. I was a real rat-bastard.”

“Did you really think you were having sex with her as an escort, though?” I don’t know why I persisted with this line of questioning; maybe because at one time I was the target of Devin the Escort’s reverse hide-and-seek game.

“I don’t know, Andi. It was so long ago. And you have to understand where my head was at. I was just getting started as an escort; I didn’t want a girlfriend. I’m not saying it was the right way to think or behave, but the bottom line is that at the time I pushed her away.”

“So what did she say?”

“She threw the drink she was mixing in my face. And let me tell you, that is every bit as humiliating as it looks on TV. And it stings, too.”

“Still, I’m not sure you didn’t deserve it.”

“Oh, I totally deserved it, even though I was mad as hell at her.” He paused for a couple of beats. “I never went back to that hotel. We never saw each other again, and she never called. Perhaps she threw away the business card.”

I slid out of his hold to use the bathroom as David shook his arm to wake it up. Afterward I donned one of his T-shirts and flopped on the bed, as if gossiping with my best friend at a slumber party.

“So what happened tonight?” I asked.

“Jane—Janine—told me she’d been with one other guy during the two-week period she’d been with me, and she had never quite nailed down the date of Wylie’s conception. Probably because she didn’t want to know.”

“Can you blame her? She’d been reckless—”

“—not with me,” he interjected.

“So you thought—and she had no way to get in touch with you or the other guy, presumably.”

“But she said she’d always had a feeling it was me,” said David.

“Because of her eyes. Wylie’s, I mean.”

He shrugged. “I guess so. Anyway, Janine said it would be best if we just let it alone, left things as they were. She’s happily married, and he’s the only father Wylie’s ever known. According to her, he’s a good guy.”

Wylie hadn’t said anything one way or the other.

I returned to an upright position and tucked one leg underneath. “David!”

“What?”

“You can’t just pretend this never happened! That girl has a right to know who her biological father is. So do you, for that matter.”

“Look, Andi—like you said, she’s just a rebellious teenager looking for some drama. That she actually found me was a freak coincidence. Besides, the odds of my being her father are…”

“… not the point,” I argued. “You can’t put the pin back in the grenade. You’ve got to talk to a lawyer and find out if you’re legally responsible for her, not to mention financially. You could owe fifteen years of child support.”

“Not if her mother doesn’t want me involved,” he countered.

I shook my head, irritated. “You yelled at Wylie for making it out to be so simple, and here you are blowing it off as if she got into a fender bender with you or something. This is anything but simple and you know it. I can’t believe you’re both just trying to sweep it under the rug.”

David leaned forward. “What good comes of this? All it does is upset two stable families that have been getting along fine otherwise.”

“Still, you think you can act like you don’t know you may have a daughter walking around, one who has your eyes and wants to know who her father is? How can you be so selfish?”

“Hey,” he threatened.

“You have to
know
,” I pressed. “We all do.”

“And what about
you
?” he said, annoyed. “You’ve been adamant all along about not having kids. Why are you the voice of reason in this? You suddenly want a teenage girl in our lives?”

I slunk away from him and stood up. “I seem to be the only one who does at the moment. Look, David, this situation scares me to death. But we have to meet it head-on.”

We seemed to be in a face-off, each of us locked into a scowl.

“You gonna come back to bed, or are you just gonna stand there?” he asked me. I felt like pummeling him.

I stayed put.

“Andi, I can’t do anything more about it tonight, so will you come back to bed so we can get some sleep? It’s been a long day and I’m exhausted.”

I was exhausted too.

David extended his arm. “Please? I’m sorry.”

I reluctantly climbed back into bed. He folded me into his arms and kissed my forehead, apologizing again. I kissed him one more time; he smelled of cologne and sex.

“I love you,” I said before adding, “jerk.”

He broke into a grin. “Backatcha,” he teased. I turned out the light and we snuggled under the sheets. But I don’t think either of us accomplished anything more than the occasional dozing.

chapter seven

We hadn’t spoken about Wylie, or her genes, since she’d appeared in the backyard two days ago. Danced around it with banal conversation and feigned preoccupation with the beginning of the fall semester and daily chores. But I couldn’t go five minutes without thinking of her, in those Daisy Dukes and flip-flops and purple strand of hair, as a child seeking validation. I couldn’t stop imagining her sitting at the butcher-block table, eating more than just leftovers. If I was so consumed with these thoughts and feelings, then what was David going through? And how could he so willingly avoid it? How could I let him?

I entered the study, where David was sitting in the recliner, reading, and I approached the easel in the opposite corner. He had always considered painting to be a hobby, a form of relaxation. When I had asked him why he didn’t sell his work, he insisted that he’d be laughed out of the very galleries he’d so successfully managed and patronized. He wasn’t “a natural,” he insisted. He had begun this latest canvas a few months ago, a Manet-style landscape of the Harvard campus. I studied it, letting my pupils go in and out of focus at the fleeting brushstrokes (a phrase from David’s first essay that I’d never forgotten), looking as if they’d been painted with such ferocity,
except I knew better. I knew the hand that held the brush and made those quick, darting movements—enough for you to miss them if you weren’t looking—in a quiet room (he’d gone to Harvard to sketch the scene and study the light, but preferred to work at home). He set up drop cloths in the space around him, although usually he worked in his Cambridge apartment, having converted one of the rooms into a studio, furniture and flooring be damned.

I suddenly found myself wondering what went through his mind when he painted. Were his thoughts just as quick and darting? Did his mind wander off to his to-do list or e-mail inbox, or did he get the way I do when I write—lost in the scene, in an endless
now
, listening to the voices of characters rather than my own inner voice?

“You like?” he asked, startling me.

“It’ll be beautiful when it’s done. One of your best.”

“If I ever finish it.”

“Why aren’t you working on it in Cambridge?”

“I like being here,” he said with a wink.

“Then why’d you call it ‘
her home
’?” I asked.

He turned his eyes away from the book and looked at me. “What?”

“The other night when you yelled at Janine for snapping at me. You said, ‘This is
her
home.’ It’s yours too, you know.”

“I suppose you like to think of it that way, but the truth is, it’s not. My name’s not on the title.”

I frowned. “That’s just a technicality, isn’t it?”

“It’s a pretty big technicality, don’t you think? Look, it’s not something I resent—”

I interrupted him. “You could’ve fooled me just now.…”

“I know what this house means to you. It’s yours and Sam’s. That’s just the way it is, and it’s OK with me.”

“You sure?” I asked.

“It’s fine,” he said, and went back to reading.

Despite my initial reluctance, David had persuaded me that we’d be happier living together in Northampton than Cambridge. The Cambridge place, for all its luxuries and comforts, didn’t have the warmth or charm of the Northampton house, to say nothing of the commute to and from NU, especially during the winter months. I’d worried about how it would feel to have David living in what had been Sam’s space—he’d owned the house years before we’d met—worried that David would somehow “replace” Sam as if he’d never been there. But David had told me it was important to honor Sam’s presence at all times. A framed photograph of Sam lived in almost every room. And David never seemed to mind if I told stories about Sam; if anything, he encouraged them. In a strange way, Sam was a part of our relationship that was neither intrusive nor threatening. He was neither a third wheel nor a wedge, and I sensed that Sam somehow approved of my being with David.

But at that moment the house being in my name only was no longer OK with me.

Lost in thought and still staring at the canvas, I heard myself speak. “Hey, Dev?”

“Yes?”

I took my gaze away from the painting and directed it at him. “Will you teach me to paint?”

He looked up from his book and peeked over his reading glasses.

“Say that again?”

“I think I’d like to learn how to paint.”

He closed the book and rested it on his lap, crossed his arms, and gave me a coy look. I crossed my arms as if to return
a mirror image of him, knowing exactly what he was thinking:
Déjà vu all over again.

“Why do you wanna learn how to paint?” He said this in a teasing voice, as if reenacting a scene from long ago. Hell, why couldn’t he ever make things easy for me?

“I don’t know,” I said. “You make it look so simple, not to mention enjoyable.”

He stood up, leaving his book on the chair, and padded to the easel. “It’s not, you know.”